Kaleidoscope of Death

When the light sparked off, Lin Qiushi’s brain hadn’t even reacted before his body leapt forward. He wanted to put out the lamp like yesterday, but his frantic motions ended up knocking the oil lamp right over. Though the wick was extinguished, the lamp still hit the floor with a crisp clang, and the oil too spilled all over.

The room once again sank into silent darkness. Lin Qiushi was half-kneeled by the window, and felt a bad feeling rising—above his head came the sound of fingers scratching at window paper. They scratched relentlessly on; it was apparent that more than one person was trying to pierce their window.

Lin Qiushi held his breath and steeled himself. Glancing up, he saw by moonlight countless pairs of children’s hands patting and poking and digging at their window. The next moment, there came a rip. Lin Qiushi saw a pair of pale, kid-sized hands burst through that thin paper, reaching right in.

As if this were a signal, that tiny pair of hands began to work open a hole in the window paper. Behind that hole appeared a child’s stark white face. The child opened its blood red maw, and let out harsh, hiccuping cries.

The child started trying to squeeze in from the window. Its eyes were thin black lines, and its pupils were completely invisible; with colorless, water-bloated skin, it looked nothing like a human at all.

It reached out, trying hard to crawl inside the room through that ripped-open hole. In moments it was halfway through, and was soon about to be all the way in.

Lin Qiushi couldn’t help but back away. The child’s cries though reminded him of something; he quickly recalled the words from the hint, and speedily chanted: “I’ve said it once I’ll say it twice, my baby cries with all his might, if you see this chant this thrice, and he’ll sleep on ‘til morning light.”

The moment these words were said, the child’s motions noticeably slowed. But it was still trying hard to crawl inside the house.

Lin Qiushi sped through the second chant, then the third chant. After the third time, the little ghoul that had almost made its way in finally halted. It hung completely motionless on that window paper, as if it had fallen asleep.

The tightness in Lin Qiushi’s chest loosened. Because he’d seen the townspeople speak this chant for protection at the sacrifice, he’d brazenly read the hint aloud. He hadn’t thought it would be this effective though.

The ghoul’s body was stuck in the window, and could no longer enter even a centimeter more.

But Lin Qiushi still wouldn’t move. Through the window paper, he could still see the tall incisive shadow of the Landlady outside their room.

She paced back and forth in front of the window, waiting in agitation for something.

But when she discovered the ghoul had gotten stuck and no longer seemed to be moving, she descended into an immense fury. Lin Qiushi saw her grab and pull at the ghoul’s body, dragging it out bit by bit. Then that white face appeared behind the window, angrily searching inside the room. She even began to spit curses under her breath.

Lin Qiushi half-squatted under the window, and didn’t dare move.

This was a perfect blindspot; the woman couldn’t possibly see him from her angle. The woman’s dark eyes loped around the room, and when they failed to discover what they wanted, a long, low, angry roar emanated from her throat, as if from an enraged beast.

Lin Qiushi pretended he saw nothing, and heard nothing.

They stayed in that stalemate for a long time; the woman did not leave, and Lin Qiushi did not move.

The woman seemed certain there was someone awake in the room, and stood at the window completely refusing to move. It wasn’t until there came a bright rooster call from the courtyard that Lin Qiushi heard footsteps leaving outside. Accompanying these footsteps was the sound of a sharp weapon dragging along the ground—Lin Qiushi recalled the long knife he’d seen the woman use to chop up bodies in the courtyard yesterday, and suspected that was what the woman held in her hand.

Unquestionably, if he hadn’t reacted fast enough, he’d have been dead where he stood.

Lin Qiushi looked at Gu Longming, who still slept soundly on the bed, and couldn’t help but develop a kind of respect for the guy. At the same time he confirmed his own thoughts.

Where Gu Longming slept was visible to the woman outside. If she could have made a move on Gu Longming on the bed, then Gu Longming would surely be dead.

Which was to say there were at least two conditions for the woman to kill. One was that the person had to be awake, and two was that she had to see that person.

Having sat at the side all night, Lin Qiushi’s legs had gone a bit asleep. He stumbled up to standing, massaging his numb thighs as he returned to the bed. Through the broken window paper, he could see the faint dawnlight.

It was almost morning, but Lin Qiushi hadn’t slept all night. He got back in bed, and after a short nap, felt Gu Longming starting to get up.

“Fuck, oh fuck.” Fresh from a dream, the first thing Gu Longming saw was the broken window paper at his side. He shouted a few times in surprise, and hurriedly shook Lin Qiushi awake. “Linlin, Linlin, the window paper’s broken! It’s broken!”

Lin Qiushi opened his eyes, in mild exasperation. “I know.”

Gu Longming was shocked. “You know?”

“Mh.” Lin Qiushi explained, “last night, the little ghouls and the woman all came.”

Gu Longming, “…” He still had a chicken’s coop of a bedhead as he stared at Lin Qiushi, utterly at a loss. His brain, having just awoken, couldn’t fully work out everything Lin Qiushi just said.

And so Lin Qiushi leaned against the headboard and simply explained to Gu Longming what had happened last night.

After listening, Gu Longming’s expression was complicated. He struggled for a while and only got out, “you’re a fucking badass, aren’t you.” After that, scared, “so she stared at me from the window all night then?” At the thought of that pallid face, staring at him all night with that haunted gaze through the window paper, Gu Longming couldn’t help but shiver.

“Yes,” Lin Qiushi said. “So she stared at you. It’s not like you lost anything by it.”

Gu Longming, “don’t say that. After all I’m just a poor high school girl who’s not even eighteen yet.”

Lin Qiushi, “…” A 180cm bodybuilder high school girl, maybe.

As Gu Longming and Lin Qiushi got out of bed, they took this time to discuss what happened the night before. Lin Qiushi also told Gu Longming that the hint could put the little ghouls to sleep.

Gu Longming tsked in awe at this, and said, “you’re way too ballsy. What would you do if the hint was what killed you?”

Lin Qiushi, “boldly hypothesize, prudently verify, right? If it’s a curse, then the townspeople wouldn’t have chanted it. Since they’d chanted it and nothing happened, then its effects likely aren’t negative.”

Gu Longming could understand the logic, but he thought that people who could react before anything happened and actually say this chant out loud had to be very few in number. Plus, to see Lin Qiushi still look so calm after experiencing the night before, he couldn’t help but commend, “as expected of Obsidian’s people. Badass.”

Lin Qiushi, “…it’s not that major.” He’d actually been scared at first too, though he’d quickly calmed down after.

“Right, who do you think swapped out the oil lamp in our room?” Lin Qiushi suddenly asked.

“Don’t know,” Gu Longming said. “I think there are two suspects: it’s either the Landlady, or it’s someone in our group.”

Lin Qiushi pointed at the floor. “I accidentally knocked over the lamp you stole yesterday.”

Gu Longming waved a hand. “No problem. We’ll go see if there are lamps in the other rooms.”

After quickly washing up, the two left their room. They went first through all the unoccupied rooms. But to their shock, all the lamps in these rooms had been swapped. The original human oil lamps were gone without a trace.

“Where are the lamps?” Gu Longming said. “Someone took all the lamps?” He analyzed, “maybe Yan Shihe did it? I looked, and it seems like the only ones who kept the human lamps are him, us, and one other group.”

Lin Qiushi said, “he probably wouldn’t do that.”

Gu Longming, “how come?”

Lin Qiushi, “so far, he doesn’t know the death conditions for certain. If the human lamps are a death condition, then taking all of them would just kill him faster. Unless… He’s already gotten more hints on the light and oil lamps.”

Gu Longming, “more hints on the lamps?” He furrowed his brows, and couldn’t seem to figure out this conjecture.

Lin Qiushi shook his head but didn’t continue. He had many thoughts, but they were all without concrete evidence, and so he didn’t bother saying them out loud and troubling Gu Longming further.

Gu Longming was also bright; when Lin Qiushi didn’t continue, he didn’t keep asking, only sighed, “then what do we do now?”

Lin Qiushi said, “let’s go eat breakfast first, and see if anyone’s missing from the group.” They should confirm if anything happened to the people who didn’t use their lamps yesterday.

As soon as food was mentioned, Gu Longming’s spirits came up. He happily agreed, “let’s, let’s.”

A few minutes later, the two appeared at the dining location.

Breakfast time was important, and practically everybody came. This was because it was the first moment of the day when you could check if anyone died last night. Lin Qiushi walked in and began counting. Yan Shihe just happened to be beside Lin Qiushi, and looked half-amused at Lin Qiushi’s gaze. “You don’t have to count, it’s seven. Not a single person’s missing. How come you guys came so late today? I even thought…”

Lin Qiushi looked at him. “You thought we’d died?”

Yan Shihe shrugged and admitted, “this is a world where anyone can die, after all.”

Lin Qiushi didn’t reply.

Including him and Gu Longming, there were nine people in the room. To exclude the three that died a couple of days ago, that meant nothing happened to anybody last night.

Lin Qiushi found a spot and sat, grabbing a few things at random to eat as he thought. Could it be that the incident in their room last night had attracted the monsters’ attentions, and so nobody died? Just as he thought this, a man in the corner of the room suddenly stood and began to vomit.

They weren’t familiar with this man; they didn’t even know his name. But Lin Qiushi faintly recalled that during the riverside sacrifice on the first day, the man had been teamed up with the unlucky sucker who got pulled into the water.

“Ack, ack…” The people around him looked upon the loud vomiting with expressions of disgust.

“Hey man, you alright?” Gu Longming set down the food around him and stood up to go help, but Lin Qiushi caught him by the arm.

“What is it?” Gu Longming looked wary.

Lin Qiushi, “don’t go over there. Something’s off.”

Gu Longming, “what’s off?”

Lin Qiushi, “I’m not sure… On this person, there’s something…” The truth was when the person was vomiting, he also heard another very odd sound coming from this person’s body. This sound was a bit like something tearing and chewing. Though it was faint, Lin Qiushi’s ears caught it. He was quite certain that the source of the noise was the man before them, though the man wasn’t eating anything at all. Judging by other people’s reactions, they clearly hadn’t heard this noise.

Not long after Lin Qiushi held Gu Longming back, the man who had thrown up all his breakfast began throwing up blood. Mouthful after mouthful of fresh blood, alongside shredded entrails were hacked up from his mouth.

Most people’s expressions changed after that, clearly terrified by the sight.

“Aah! Aah! Help, help!” Then the man began to toss and roll on the floor. He seemed to be experiencing some excruciating pain, and had a hand over his stomach as he kept screaming.

His screams continued for a bit before stopping; the man’s breaths came weaker and weaker, until he finally lied unmoving on the ground—dead, just like that.

The atmosphere among the group was terrifyingly silent.

Some couldn’t take the sight of this, and turned to leave the room. Lin Qiushi didn’t move. Standing beside him with something of a similar expression was the man who’d swapped hints with them yesterday, Yan Shihe.

“He's… dead?” Gu Longming said. “How could he suddenly…”

Frowning, Lin Qiushi didn’t reply. His gaze had fallen to the man’s abdomen. That chewing sound was still continuing; even though the man’s breathing had stopped, the sound still ceaselessly came from the man’s stomach.

In the midst of Lin Qiushi’s doubts, an abnormal squirming came from the man’s stomach, like something was struggling to get out.

The sight of this was apparent. Everybody present could see it.

Gu Longming chuckled humorlessly, “he’s, he’s not about to give birth, is he?”

His words had just fallen when the dead man’s skin was distended into the shape of a hand. From the size of this palm, it clearly belonged to an infant.

Seeing this twist, Gu Longming didn’t dare joke any further, but sank into silence with Lin Qiushi.

The chewing sound gradually stopped. What replaced it was a kind of fleshy tearing. Lin Qiushi saw the skin over the dead man’s abdomen begin to bulge out. Then, something inside seemed to burst it right open, exposing the red offal within.

A small pair of hands, covered in blood, reached out. Then the owner of those hands started trying to crawl out.

It was a tiny fetus, streaked from head to toe in blood—but its head was huge. Its gaping mouth was packed densely with teeth, and in that moment, on the thicket of teeth were even bits of shredded meat.

When they saw this, everybody couldn’t help but back up. Gu Longming said, “oh shit, he actually gave birth.”

Not long after the fetus crawled out of the dead man, it dissolved into a pool of blood and disappeared in front of them. Only the ghastly corpse left told the group that what they’d just witnessed wasn’t a hallucination at all. Someone was dead, and he’d died in that horrifying fashion before their very eyes.

As everybody sank into silence, the Landlady appeared outside the room. She strolled slowly to the body, then bent and grabbed it by the arm, lifting it like so much cargo in her grip. With an inhuman smile for the gathered people, the Landlady strolled back away with the body.

Nobody spoke, watching her leave. Lin Qiushi recalled the scene of her rendering fat the day before.

Yan Shihe, neutrally, “oh, seems like the oil lamp mentioned yesterday isn’t a death condition after all.”

His words prodded the transfixed crowd. Two people looked relieved—clearly the two who did not throw their lamp away. Everybody else got up one after another, leaving in a frenzy, likely hoping to find and bring back the human lamps they’d tossed away yesterday.

Lin Qiushi had thought they’d at least be able to find one or two—but after a while, those who returned to the room all looked pale. Someone lost control and started swearing. Eavesdropping, Lin Qiushi found out that the oil lamps they’d thrown away had been gathered by somebody and then collectively destroyed.

“Fuck, somebody wants us dead, somebody wants us to die in here—” somebody was cursing. “If I find them I swear to god!”

“How could they, how could they,” somebody else was sobbing helplessly. “What do we do now?”

Once he saw this, Yan Shihe seemed to lose interest in what was to happen next. He got up from his chair and politely bid the group goodbye.

Lin Qiushi and Gu Longming exchanged a look, and also got up to leave.

They came to a more remote corner and began to discuss what to do next.

“Let’s go steal another lamp,” Gu Longming said. “Seems like there’s nothing else we can do.”

Lin Qiushi sighed, “it’s all my fault. If I were more careful last night, I wouldn’t have knocked the lamp over.”

Gu Longming shook his head. “Actually, I think you’re great.”

Lin Qiushi, “hm?”

Gu Longming, “to tell you the truth, inside the world of the doors I… very rarely sleep.”

Lin Qiushi, “…” You call your ability to conk out the moment your head hits the pillow rarely sleeping?

Gu Longming became a bit embarrassed, awkwardly announcing, “it’s not until I came in this door and slept in the same room as you that my sleep quality went up. I don’t know why either. All I know is I sleep damn well with you.”

Lin Qiushi, “…” After listening to what Gu Longming had to say, Lin Qiushi sank into a long, long silence. He felt that he had long been misunderstanding some very fundamental thing; if what Gu Longming said was true, then it wasn’t Ruan Nanzhu who was the Sleeping Pill Fairy…

Gu Longming seemed completely at a loss with Lin Qiushi’s silence. Finally, Lin Qiushi let out a long sigh. “I thought you’d always slept that well.”

“Hahaha,” Gu Longming laughed dryly. “Though you know sleeping through the night is safer, who’s actually that big-hearted, huh? Besides, if you really sleep through the night, you end up missing important hints.”

Speaking of hints, Lin Qiushi recalled what happened last night. “If you can’t sleep on ‘til morning light, you’re the crybaby in the night. If there’s a crybaby, the lamp lights up and draws the woman over.” He spoke lowly, “but it doesn’t seem like she can enter the house, so only the little ghouls come in. But the ghouls are scared of that spell…” The moment they heard the spell, in fact, they fell right asleep.

Currently, there were two death conditions. First was not using a human lamp—those people died whether or not they’re awake. Second was using a human lamp but failing to fall asleep. There was still a small chance of surviving this one, as long as you read the spell three times before the ghoul got into your room…

“Don’t you think that the relationship between the woman and the little ghouls is a bit strange?” Lin Qiushi said. “If the human lamps are a restraint on the ghouls, then why does she make so many of them?”

This made sense to Gu Longming. “Right, and she’s not providing us with all those human lamps, more like she's…”

They said the same thing at once: “Using it herself.”

With this thought through, Lin Qiushi realized, “remember the shrine?”

Gu Longming nodded. “What about it?”

Lin Qiushi said, “I’d thought something was off last time I went in, I finally know why!”

Gu Longming, “what was wrong with it?”

Lin Qiushi, “think carefully. Don’t you think it was too bright in that shrine?”

There was only one door after all, and none of the windows had been open. They’d gone into the shrine when it was overcast, but inside had been bright as day. Now that they were thinking about it, it was likely the work of the oil lamps.

Gu Longming, “I didn’t even notice until you mentioned… We’re used to modern lighting after all, I really didn’t notice anything wrong with the oil lamps.”

Lin Qiushi, “so…”

Gu Longming, “so?”

Lin Qiushi chuckled. “What do you think would happen if we put out all the lamps inside the shrine…”

Gu Longming was shocked by Lin Qiushi’s suggestion. “Are you serious? No way, right?” If Lin Qiushi’s conjecture was correct, then that meant the human lamps had some sort of suppression effect. If the lamps went out, then whatever they sealed away would probably all come out—and who knew what the hell would happen after that.

“Don’t be so nervous,” Lin Qiushi said warmly. “I’m only joking.”

Gu Longming, “…” No, it’s right now that you’re joking.

“I really am just kidding.” Seeing that Gu Longming’s expression was still tense, Lin Qiushi laughed. “Seriously, relax. I’m not the type to do something like that.”

Gu Longming peered at him in doubt.

Lin Qiushi just changed the topic, asking, “when do we go steal the lamp?”

Gu Longming finally breathed. “Whenever, man. Why don’t we go take a look now?”

Lin Qiushi, “sure thing.”

Seeing Gu Longming finally relax, he felt an inexplicable sense of giddy mischief. But if he thought about it, this was how Ruan Nanzhu usually teased him, wasn’t it…

Author’s Note:

Who knew? Ruan Nanzhu’s existence was actually protecting the readers from fright /cackles